I just started using Multibit yesterday and I transfered 50000000 satoshi to the wallet. It has been 24 hours and the client is not letting me spend it! Says "This transaction is not yet confirmed" even though i am online and synchronized with the network.

1) If you have TWO balances in the header, one marked "Available to spend" make sure you have a read of the relevant help. If you go into the menu option "Help | Help Contents" there is a section on "What does 'Available to spend' mean ?". It is a bit different to the Satoshi client hence the help section to explain it.

2) In the 'Transactions' screen, do a right click on the transaction and select the 'Show transaction details...' option. You get a dialog box with the transaction details in. Then click on the 'View at blockchain.info' button.

This opens the transaction in blockchain.info in a browser. You can see if it is confirmed or not. If it is not confirmed according to blockchain.info then it is most likely really not confirmed. (This can be for various reasons e.g. fee too small/ dust, a previous output that is being consumed is not confirmed, double spend etc).

If it is confirmed i.e. it is in a block then the best thing to do is:

3) You can 'replay the blocks' (which is like a rescan for the Satoshi client) and Multibit will re-download the blocks to sync up your wallet to what is on the blockchain. This will only work if the transaction is actually in a block so do 2) above first to check.There is a menu option 'Tools | Reset blockchain and transactions' which hopefully should be self explanatory. If not, there is help available - just click on the (?) at the bottom left of the "Reset blockchain and transactions'" screen.

1) If you have TWO balances in the header, one marked "Available to spend" make sure you have a read of the relevant help. If you go into the menu option "Help | Help Contents" there is a section on "What does 'Available to spend' mean ?". It is a bit different to the Satoshi client hence the help section to explain it.

2) In the 'Transactions' screen, do a right click on the transaction and select the 'Show transaction details...' option. You get a dialog box with the transaction details in. Then click on the 'View at blockchain.info' button.

This opens the transaction in blockchain.info in a browser. You can see if it is confirmed or not. If it is not confirmed according to blockchain.info then it is most likely really not confirmed. (This can be for various reasons e.g. fee too small/ dust, a previous output that is being consumed is not confirmed, double spend etc).

If it is confirmed i.e. it is in a block then the best thing to do is:

3) You can 'replay the blocks' (which is like a rescan for the Satoshi client) and Multibit will re-download the blocks to sync up your wallet to what is on the blockchain. This will only work if the transaction is actually in a block so do 2) above first to check.There is a menu option 'Tools | Reset blockchain and transactions' which hopefully should be self explanatory. If not, there is help available - just click on the (?) at the bottom left of the "Reset blockchain and transactions'" screen.

Let me know if you still have trouble.

It might be the fee.

Fees 0.00005 BTC

So what do I do? Do I have to wait until a miner FEELS LIKE confirming?

I am not sure if there is any way to 'override' a transaction that is already out there - perhaps a miner reading this thread would know better as to what works.

The exchange data I get from a library called XChange. The dev (Tim Molter) has some initial work on Intersango done but it is not ready for production yet. I expect that will be the next available but I cannot say when.

I am not sure if there is any way to 'override' a transaction that is already out there - perhaps a miner reading this thread would know better as to what works.

There was a proposal by a bitcoin.org core developer that would do something to the effect of allow any party to add to the fee paid for a transaction. I don't think it got very far, and definitely isn't implemented today.

The only thing you can do to help a transaction get confirmed is to leave the client running if there is a chance the problem is the transaction just didn't get propagated and that the client would rebroadcast it.

I am not sure if there is any way to 'override' a transaction that is already out there - perhaps a miner reading this thread would know better as to what works.

There was a proposal by a bitcoin.org core developer that would do something to the effect of allow any party to add to the fee paid for a transaction. I don't think it got very far, and definitely isn't implemented today.

The only thing you can do to help a transaction get confirmed is to leave the client running if there is a chance the problem is the transaction just didn't get propagated and that the client would rebroadcast it.

i am not sure how multibit works. Do I need to keep the multibit client OPEN or is that taken care of with the multibit servers?

In the Linux installer the main MultiBit executable is called multibit-exe.jar. Because Windows people are more used to exe files for the Windows installer I wrap this to a file called multibit.exe. You just need to add the multibit-exe.jar to the same directory as the multibit.exe and start it up with:

> java -jar multibit-exe.jar

You can just have a shell file to run that command obviously too.

If you have a config file (multibit.properties) in the same directory it will use that at start up to find the wallets. You are running everything in a 'portable' mode. You want to have your wallets and blockchain on the USB too so that everything keeps in sync.

That 'java -jar multibit-exe.jar' will also work on Mac OS too.

Edit: if you want it totally portable ie you can run it on absolutely any machine, you can install Java runtime environments on your USB and call that version of Java when you start it up. For most of the time that is overkill though.

In the Linux installer the main MultiBit executable is called multibit-exe.jar. Because Windows people are more used to exe files for the Windows installer I wrap this to a file called multibit.exe. You just need to add the multibit-exe.jar to the same directory as the multibit.exe and start it up with:

> java -jar multibit-exe.jar

You can just have a shell file to run that command obviously too.

If you have a config file (multibit.properties) in the same directory it will use that at start up to find the wallets. You are running everything in a 'portable' mode. You want to have your wallets and blockchain on the USB too so that everything keeps in sync.

That 'java -jar multibit-exe.jar' will also work on Mac OS too.

Edit: if you want it totally portable ie you can run it on absolutely any machine, you can install Java runtime environments on your USB and call that version of Java when you start it up. For most of the time that is overkill though.

Assuming every computer i connect to has JRE already installed on the host. What if they don't? Can you point me in the direction of a portable JRE?